Goichi “Suda51” Suda is one of Japan’s most original and prominent action game creators, and he is responsible for the likes of Lollipop Chainsaw and No More Heroes.
Though rarely one to sit down and talk with a publication, Suda51 has obliged Destructoid during Gamescom 2025 and opened up about his upcoming project, Romeo is a Dead Man. This “ultra-violent science-fiction” game, as it is described in promotional material, is yet another high-octane action title, and one we are very likely going to love.
Suda51 told us about his inspirations for the game, the unlikely basis for the story, characters, gameplay, and a lot more.
Here is the full conversation.
Note: This interview comes by way of simultaneous interpretation. Parts have been edited to allow for better text clarity and avoid common speech repetitions.
So, regarding Romeo is a Dead Man, your newest game, and a very stylistic game at that, I wondered if you could tell me about the initial premise that led to it, and how you went about designing this game?
Suda51 (Executive Director, Grasshopper Manufacture): First, I came up with the idea of the relationship between the main character, Romeo, and Benjamin, who is his grandfather. It’s really similar to Doc and Marty in the Back to the Future series. I figured, okay, we’ve got these two characters. It’s going to be about time and space. Obviously, being a Grasshopper game, it’s going to have battle action stuff in it.
I built off of that base of the time and space thing with a Doc and Marty relationship between the characters. As for the rest, as Grasshopper, we did what we do. We added a bunch of action and kills into it.
From playing the game, I feel it’s very much a Romeo and Juliet storyline. It’s very obvious to see the inspirations behind the classic Shakespearean play. Beyond what you’ve already mentioned, are there any other elements, series or games that you also looked at to be inspired by when making this title?
Suda51: As you said, obviously, there are the main influences that are pretty obvious in the game. A genre that I really got a lot of inspiration from was zombie movies. In the game, there are basically two types of monsters. They’re called Rotters in the game, but there’s a kind of Goomba-style bad guy zombie that Romeo goes around and kills everywhere. And there’s the more boss-type characters and the bigger, weird creatures.
But in order to get some inspiration and ideas for the Rotters in the game, and also for some of the bigger creatures as well, a bunch of people at the studio and I pretty much just went through a whole bunch of classic zombie movies and got some inspiration here and there.
You are renowned for your style. Games like Lollipop Chainsaw, No More Heroes, all these are fundamentally in a Suda51 style. How have you taken your many years of experience creating all these types of games and used it to develop Romeo is Deadman into the game it is today?
Suda51: I thought about how can I take the stuff that I’ve learned and the stuff that I’ve come up with for these other characters like Travis Touchdown and Juliet and the game and the characters in Killer7 and kind of take parts from those and also take lessons I’ve learned from those and come up with this new character, Romeo Stargazer and how I can form him into his own individual, specific, different person.
One of the first things that I thought of when making the game was, okay, how do I take things from my older games and put them into this one guy, but make him completely separate from these other characters so he doesn’t overlap too much.
You’re very renowned for your characters and the relationships that you built. How important is it for you as a storyteller to show off and build on these relationships of your characters to help the narrative develop over time? How do you go about making the game fun, enjoyable, but also very in-depth and gripping at the same time?
Suda51: We’ve got a guy named Hirotaka who’s been with the company for a long time. He takes care of most of the general action stuff, like the bosses and things like this. I also have some input into that, but it’s mainly on him. When it comes to the story, it’s either me or our director, Ren Yamazaki, or both of us together. We give each other input, bounce ideas back and forth.
The way Grasshopper is set up, each element of the game has its own person in charge. The story guy, the action guy, the art guy, and stuff like that. We’ve all got a really good understanding and trusting relationship.
So, I know that if I’m here writing the story, this guy is going to take care of the action part. I don’t need to worry about him. He doesn’t have to worry about me writing up some story that doesn’t match the action parts at all. Having that trusting relationship among the different people in charge of the different elements of the game makes it a lot easier to put something together that really fits and everything makes sense together.
If Travis and Romeo were to fight, who would win?
Suda51: At this moment, I’d say Romeo Stargazer. Because Travis is having a rest.
